How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media

Ahh, I’ve been planning to write this one for awhile: an entire article on archival quality media. As I do professional software development as well as professional photography (what a weird combination), I need archival quality CD and DVD media to store my data on.

However, one of the hardest things to is actually find good media, or even understand why it is good media. This article focuses on the history of Compact Discs, writable CD/DVD media, and why DVD+R is superior to DVD-R. If you want to just know what media is worth buying, skip to the summary at the bottom.

Short history of the Compact Disc
The invention of the Compact Disc has had a large impact on both music and computing in the last 20 years. Invented in 1979 as a joint project between Sony and Philips to counter the self-destructive nature of consumer audio playback (such as tapes and records that could only be played so many times before the recording degraded significantly) by switching to a resilient digital format.

The CD was also designed to store standard computer data, as in 1985 the first CD drives for computers were released; massive, bulky, and expensive, it was not until the mid-90s that they really took off, driven almost solely by video games and large multimedia applications.

In 1990, Sony and Philips went back to the drawing table, and then came out with the CD-R, a record-once medium. Yet again, the first CD burners were large, expensive, and bulky, but by the late 90s having a CD burner was the new ‘in’.

The first few generations of CD media, designed by Taiyo Yuden (a company who I respect, and buy all my archival quality media from), actually kind of sucked; it wasn’t until around 2000 that companies started producing very high end media.

CDs and DVDs store individual bits (encoded in various ways depending on the media) with spots of reflective and non-reflective areas. This method is called ‘pits and lands’, where pits ‘absorb’ light (ie, are ‘off’ bits) and lands ‘reflect’ light (ie, are ‘on’ bits).

With pressed media, the pressing method causes pits to reflect the laser’s light away from the sensor, and the lands to reflect it back at the sensor. With burned media, a high energy laser causes spots of organic dye to go opaque and obscure the reflective surface for the pits, leaving the organic dye for lands alone.

Short history of the DVD
While burning was becoming popular in the late 90s, so was playing high quality video on DVDs. Storing almost 7 times the data of a 700MB CD (or almost 13 in the case of dual layer DVDs), allowed companies to store massive amounts of data on one disc, leading to the movie industry to drop VHS tapes and the video game industry to drop CDs.

In 1995, the first DVD specification was ratified by over a dozen companies including Sony and Philips, as well as Thompson, Pioneer, and Mitsubishi. By 2000, at least half the homes in the US and Japan had DVD players.

So, obviously, the next step was to produce burnable DVDs. Two separate, and incompatible, efforts took hold. The first one, Pioneer’s DVD-R (pronounced ‘DVD dash R’) was released in 1997, using different data storage methods than pressed DVDs (appearing to be more like CD-R than DVD), a poor error correction scheme, and the ‘wobble’ laser tracking system of DVD-R is inadequate for the job.

The second effort, lead by the DVD+RW Alliance (headed by Sony, Philips, Mitsubishi, and Thompson) was released in 2002, as an alternative to the poorly implemented DVD-R. DVD+R uses a superior ‘wobble’ laser tracking system, a far better error correction method, and the media quality itself is typically higher. (See the ‘Why DVD+R?’ section below for a more technical explanation)

Why archival media is hard to produce
Unlike pressed CDs/DVDs, ‘burnt’ CDs/DVDs can eventually ‘fade’, due to five things that effect the quality of CD media: Sealing method, reflective layer, organic dye makeup, where it was manufactured, and your storage practices (please keep all media out of direct sunlight, in a nice cool dry dark place, in acid-free plastic containers; this will triple the lifetime of any media).

The silver and aluminum alloys used in virtually all blank CD/DVD media has one major issue, requiring the manufacturer to lacquer a protective seal over the entire disc: silver and aluminum oxidize when they hit air, turning the normally reflective layer into silver or aluminum rust. Some (very expensive) media uses gold instead which doesn’t oxidize, however DVD media cannot use gold due to design issues (not true anymore, see update 1 below). Today, only the cheapest of the cheap media has severe issues with sealing practices (as such, avoid any media made outside of Japan and Taiwan; especially avoid media made in India).

Assuming that the protective seal and reflective layer are manufactured correctly, the next issue is the organic dye. The first organic dyes, designed by Taiyo Yuden, were Cyanine-based and, under normal conditions, had a shelf life of around ten years; simply, that was simply unacceptable for archive discs. Taiyo Yuden, Mitsubishi Chemicals, Mitsui Co., and Ciba Specialty Chemicals spent the next ten years trying to produce the best organic dyes, eventually reaching archive-quality CD media.

Taiyo Yuden produced ‘Super Cyanine’, a chemically stabilized version of the original Cyanine dye designs, while TDK offers media that uses ‘metal-stabilized Cyanine’ dye, leading to similar shelf lives as Taiyo Yuden’s media. Taiyo Yuden states their Super Cyanine dye is chemically stable for at least 70 years, and TDK states their metal-stabilized Cyanine is also stable for 70 years.

On the other hand, Mitsubishi went in a different direction and produced what is called a Metal Azo dye, that they claim is stable for around 100 years. Azo dyes are chemically stable, however, the shelf life of media using Azo dyes typically does not exceed that of Super Cyanine and metal-stabilized Cyanine.

The third dye produced for CD media is called Phthalocyanine dye, with the majority of such dyes produced by Mitsui and Ciba. Typically marketed as more resistant to heat and UV radiation than Cyanine and Azo, modern Cyanine and Azo dyes last just as long in extreme conditions.

DVDs also use similar dyes, however manufacturers have intentionally kept what dyes they use a secret (instead of a feature in their marketing of the media), and all blank DVDs are intentionally the same color (as different dyes on CDs make blanks different colors, however, it is not indicative of what dye is used due to some manufacturers using different colored silver alloys and non-reactive additives in the dye).

Why Taiyo Yuden media, and how to buy in the US
The best discs in circulation tend to be Taiyo Yuden media. In Japan, you find their media under the brand That’s, which are wholly owned by Taiyo Yuden.

As of late 2009, Taiyo Yuden announced they were buying the JVC Advanced Media brand, and making it a wholly owned and operated brand for TY products. They did this to put Taiyo Yuden products on store shelves worldwide. See update 4 at the bottom for a full explanation.

Simply put, I have never had problems with any kind of Taiyo Yuden media. Ever. I have bought CDs and DVDs under a dozen different brands (including non-Taiyo Yuden manufactured TDK and Verbatim), and the only ones that have had a 100% success rate is Taiyo Yuden.

If you cannot find any company selling media under the Taiyo Yuden/JVC Advanced Media brand, I suggest buying from the SuperMediaStore.com, who offer a wide range of Taiyo Yuden CD media, DVD-R media, and DVD+R media. I tend to buy just from them, as they are the only company that guarantees that their media is actually from Taiyo Yuden and not a fake (see the above linked FAQ on information about fake Taiyo Yuden media).

Why DVD+R?
This is the most technical section of the article. If you don’t understand the basics of how CD/DVD media works, or find such technical discussions boring, skip to the next section.

As I said earlier, DVD-R sucks for data preservation for three reasons: inferior error correction, inferior ‘wobble’ tracking, and the fact its data writing methods look like an un-needed halfway point between CD-R and DVD+R. The wobble tracking I shall explain first, then the error corrections method, then the specifics of ATIP/pre-pit/ADIP optimum power settings.

For a CD/DVD burner to track where it is on the disc, it uses three things: the ‘wobble’ of the data track (where it actually wobbles back and forth instead of in a straight line) to tell where it is in the track, the position of the track to tell where it is on the disc, and some additional information on the disc to tell where the track (singular, as CDs and DVDs only have one track, and it is written in a concentric spiral) begins and ends.

This additional information on a CD-R is called the ATIP (Absolute Time In Pregroove), which contains how long the track is, where it begins, what the maximum and minimum writing speeds are, what formula dye it uses, who actually made it, optimum power control settings, and error correction data. The ATIP is stored as a frequency modulation in the wobble itself.

However, since the wobble changes subtly to encode data, it is impossible to use with the small size of tracks DVD requires, as electric noise in the laser pickup and wobbles introduced by the electric motor spinning the disc, these could easily be read as frequency changes in the real track itself.

On DVD-R, they tried to solve the problem with something called ‘pre-pits’ where spikes in the amplitude of the wobble appear due to pits fully out of phase with the rest of the track (ie, between two spirals of the track, where there is no data). This can be viewed as a simple improvement over CD-R as it makes it easier to track the wobble (since the wobble is constant except for the easy to detect and remove spikes).

Unfortunately, this method as one flaw: due to electric noise in the laser pickup, it would be very easy to miss the pre-pit (or read one that wasn’t actually there) if the disc were damaged or spun at fast speeds. The time to read a pre-pit is 1T (roughly .0000000038th of a second), which even for a computer can be easy to miss. DVD-R traded hard to track frequency changes for hard to read wobble-encoded data.

On a DVD+R, however, they came up with a much better method. Instead of changing the frequency of the wobble, or causing amplitude spikes in the wobble, they use complete phase changes. Where CD-R’s and DVD-R’s methods make you choose between either easy wobble tracking or easy ATIP reading, DVD+R’s method makes it very easy to track the wobble, and also very easy to encode data into the wobble. DVD+R’s method is called ADIP (ADdress In Pre-groove), which uses a phase change method.

With ADIPs’ phase changes, the direction of the wobble changes and continues on going in the exact opposite direction (ie, counter-clockwise to clockwise, or the reverse). For example, if the wobble was ‘going up’, the phase change causes it to instantly reverse direction start ‘going down’ no matter where it in the wobble cycle. The phase change is very easy to detect, and also continues for a set period (in this case, one 32T section of the track, or 32 times longer than the pre-pit method of DVD-R).

The state of the phase change (clockwise or counter-clockwise) encodes the individual bits in each block In essence, with the phase change method, not only do you have an easy way of tracking the wobble, but you now have an easy way of reading wobble-encoded data.

As I mentioned earlier, this wobble-encoded data includes error correction of wobble-encoded data itself. Error correction is the most important part of media, because if it does not work, then you’ve lost your data, even if there is nothing seriously wrong with the disc.

The DVD-R specification states that for every 192 bits, 64 of them are not protected under any scheme, 24 of them are protected by 24 bits of parity, and the last 56 bits are protected by another 24 bits of parity. This weird (to put it mildly) scheme allows you to easily scramble or lose 25% of the data that is required to read your disk! This information is almost more important than the actual data burned on the disc itself.

The DVD+R specification, however, states that for every 204 bits of information, it is split into four blocks of 52 bits containing 1 sync bit to prevent misreading because of phase changes, 31 bits of data, and a 20 bit parity (that protects all 32 bits of data). The sync bit is always the same value in all four blocks, and exists only to prevent phase inversions.

Now, the third item on the list: how DVD+R discs burn better. As I said earlier, ATIP/pre-pit/ADIP stores information about optimum power control settings. This information is basically formulas stating how much output power is needed, what the laser startup power should be, and other pieces of information you require to properly burn a DVD.

Optimum power control output is dependent on three things: burning speed, laser wavelength, and information given to the drive about the media. DVD-R basically fails on all three accounts because DVD+R simply includes far more information about the media in the ADIP data than DVD-R does in it’s pre-pit data.

DVD+R includes four optimum profiles, one for four major burning speeds (usually 2x, 4x, 6x, and 8x, though this can change as speeds increase). Each of these profiles include optimum power output based on laser wavelength, more precise laser power settings, and other additional information. With this information, any DVD+R burner can far more optimize it’s burning strategy to fit the media than it can with DVD-R, consistently providing better burns.

For comparison, DVD-R includes one profile, optimum power output based for that one profile only and uncalibrated towards what wavelength it is for, less precise laser power settings, and no other additional information. Typically, DVD-R burners have to already know how to burn a certain piece of media (and include this information in their firmwares) before they can properly burn to it. New media often is not properly supported.

In addition to the optimum power control profiles, DVD+R also gives four times more scratch space for the drive to calibrate the laser on; more space can only improve the calibration quality. So, in short, DVD+R media exists to simply produce better burns and protect your data better.

And finally, the end of the article…
Finally, after roughly three pages of technical discussion, we arrive at the end of my dissertation on archival quality CD/DVD media. So, you’re probably now wondering, in simple terms, what media do I recommend?

To begin with, I do not recommend CD-RW, DVD-RW, or DVD+RW media in any form for permanent storage. This is mostly a no-brainer, but those discs are meant to be able to be changed after burning, and they are simply unsuitable for long-term archival storage. I also do not recommend DVD-R media due to DVD+R’s superior error correction and burning control.

That said, I recommend Taiyo Yuden media across the board. Taiyo Yuden currently manufactures 52x CD-R, 16x DVD-R, and 16x DVD+R media in normal shiney silver, inkjet printable, and thermal printable forms. Taiyo Yuden may be one of the most expensive (if not the most expensive), but their media quality is unsurpassed. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I recommended buying from SuperMediaStore.com as they are the only online US distributor that guarantees that their Taiyo Yuden media is certified as coming from Taiyo Yuden.

So, what am I using? Due to Taiyo Yuden’s superior media quality, and DVD+R’s superior design, I use only Taiyo Yuden DVD+R media. I recommend this media to everyone who wishes to keep their data for a long, long time.

Update 1: It seems MAM-A and Kodak actually has managed to make a gold DVD, though no one else seems to be manufacturing them (Taiyo Yuden/JVC Advanced Media now makes an archival gold disc, see update 6). However, MAM-A’s gold archival media still doesn’t seem to exceed TY quality (although Mr 60,000 in the comments below puts TY second best to MAM-A). Due to the extreme cost of gold archival media ($2+ a disc) with very little increased protection (if any), I’ll still say TY media is better. I want to see more independent tests on this before I change my recommendation.

In addition, I’d like to mention that Verbatim has been relabeling other brands of disc as their own. If the box/spindle/cakebox the discs come in don’t say they’re manufactured with Verbatim’s proprietary Azo dye (sometimes called Advanced Azo, sometimes not, depending on the product) then they aren’t Verbatim media at all and should be avoided as they may not meet typical home archival standards.

Update 2: (Sept. 19th 2007) Its almost been a year since I first wrote this article. My recommendations for media have not changed, my recommendations for DVD burners have.

Samsung: Samsung is currently producing two drives worth owning, the
Samsung SH-S222AB (SATA). They’re not considered archival grade, but they’re not bad.

TEAC: TEAC makes an archival drive that is ISO/IEC10995 compliant, and is very expensive. Comes in two forms, external USB DV-W5000U and internal SATA DV-W5000S. I’ve seen DV-W5000U drives for sale for $500, and refurbished DV-W5000S drives for $150-200. This is the elite of drives, and recommended if you’re very serious about 30+ year archival storage.

Update 3: (July 26th 2009) Its been awhile since I updated this article. Pioneer is no longer manufacturing drives worth using. Just buy a Samsung or TEAC drive like I link to above. I’m using two Samsung drives now after my PX-716 finally died after years of service.

My recommendation on TY and Verbatim hasn’t changed, and I imagine it will never change; DVD media will not change significantly from here on out. Bluray in my opinion is not worth switching over to unless you’re storing data that can be measured in hundreds of gigabytes, and at that point you might want to look into archival tape storage.

When Bluray is worth switching over to, I’ll write a follow up article to this one. High quality single layer media will have to drop below 50 cents a piece and Bluray burners will have to become ubiquitous (much like DVD burners are now) before that happens. I’m thinking 2011 or later.

Update 4: (August 3rd 2010) Taiyo Yuden has bought the JVC Media brand and is now operating under the JVC Advanced Media brand. You can now buy TY inside JVC boxes and get your usual TY quality. This site has the conversion of part numbers.

JVC has not bought Taiyo Yuden, and Taiyo Yuden is in full control of this new venture. They merely bought they name so they can put TY products on store shelves worldwide.

SuperMediaStore.com is selling almost all JVC Advanced Media branded TY products in place of the old TY branded ones.

Update 5: (September 27th 2011) A few people have asked about how PIE/PIF scans work.

DVD-R and DVD+R both employ two stage error correction.

PIE (Parity Inner Error) just means error correction was used, PIF (Parity Inner Failure) means the error was unrecoverable using the inner ECC block but still may be recovered using the outer ECC block . On tools that give avg/max/total, max PIE values above 140, or max PIF values above 4* means the disc needs to be replaced but the data most likely isn’t corrupted yet**.

For a burn to be considered still pristine you want max PIE below 20 and max PIF 3 or lower.

Discs will NOT be pristine after 5 years, but there is a fall off of PIF/PIE increasing after 6 months and doesn’t seem to start picking up again until 5-10 years depending on storage environment.

Totals for PIF can be as high as 100k yet have a max of 20, and total PIF can be as high as 1000 but have a max below 3. Max PIE is considered mostly fatal above 280 and can reach as high as 1664, and max PIF can reach as high as 208*.

DVD+R generally will maintain lower values for both due to superior error correction techniques.

* Some tools and/or drives won’t list above 4 for PIF.

** Some tools and/or drives also list PO (Parity Outer) uncorrectable errors. This is for any read that has a max PIF above 4. This indicates a mostly unrecoverable data corruption error, which would effect (if I’ve done my math right) 36k of data (although that doesn’t mean the whole 36k of data is corrupted, just that its corrupted inside of that 36k). This still does not indicate the disc is unreadable, some obsessive ripping tools will try multiple reads in an effort to get a valid read or different incorrect reads that can be merged into a valid read.

Also, a few people have asked when I’m going to write that Bluray follow up article. I don’t think Bluray is viable for long term archival storage yet. I continue my recommendation that if you need to store hundreds of gigabytes of data or more, consider archival tape.

Comments

One more thing if I may. I understand that we probably wont be using DVDs much in 6,7, or 8 years or so, but I would prefer that my burned DVDs aren’t coasters by then.

With my current DVD-Rs, what is the real-time life I should expect from them, considering I keep them in a reasonably cool environment in individual DVD cases? On some video encoding forums ive seen people say they will only last 4-5 years, then your article says they can last much much longer.

Maybe I missed it in your article or in the 400+ comments, but what is the actual useful life of my Verbatim DVD-R? what about TY DVD+R? Thanks again.

From now on I will start using DVD+R from Taiyo Yuden, but in the past few months ive been using DVD-R media from Verbatim.

I would say I have about 40-50 discs (data, home video, movies), and id like them to last a long time. So my question is, would it make sense to copy these DVDs onto Taiyo Yuden DVD+R media? The extra 50 cents per disc isn’t a big deal to re-burn them, but I just want to make sure they last a long time, as long as possible at least. Thanks!

Terence O’Kelly:
I’m from Sweden so my english may not be 100% accurate when it comes to details in the language.
That is the ring I’m talking about.
Obviously DVD+R doesn’t need this initialization due to other specifications.
Thank you for the answer that cured my curiosity 🙂

The circles I was originally referring to were on the outer edge of the disc–“at the end of the recording section” as described in the first post. If, however, the question refers to a thin, light (not dark under halogen light) ring near the centering hole BEFORE the recording section on a DVD-R disc, that ring is the initialization area required by the DVD-R specification as part of copy protection schemes. Every DVD-R must be initialized/recorded before it leaves the factory.

There are some good points in the article, but some clarification may help in understanding how to determine the long life of different media.

1) CD-R production was fairly stable as early as 1996. Kodak’s media were (Media are always plural. A single disc is a medium.) quite stable, and recorded 4X samples from 1995 that I have tested recently show performance values as good as the best of today’s CD-R production. It was the drives and their optical pickups that saw greater improvements in 2000, not the discs. (Of course, there were examples of poor disc production then as there still are today.)

2) DVD-R is designed as a sequential video recording format. The DVD Forum reserved data recording for DVD-RAM. DVD+RW was initially intended as a rewritable only disc that could handle both data and video. (The logo remains “DVD+RW” despite the fact that the market demanded an organic dye-based version almost immediately; and that logo has created a source of confusion for customers.) That is why the high frequency modulated wobble is so important–it was intended as a guide for the initial recording as well as a guide for subsequent rewrites and erasure. The wobble and the in-line pre-pits of the DVD-R format are intended only as the initial laser tracking guide. Once a disc is recorded, the data provide the tracking information. There is no significant quality difference between the two although the DVD-R is more difficult to make because of the double-laser required in making masters with pre-pit information and the required initialization of each disc.

3) Gold is ideal as a mirror layer for CD-R because the original specifications were designed for it. It is not ideal for DVD+/-R because it is less reflective than silver alloy and because the 435-450 nm wavelength of the DVD laser is not as effective on the gold surface. Gold DVD+/-R media are very stable, but they have higher initial error rates than discs based on silver alloys as reflective layers.

4) The Taiyo Yuden life certificate states that their media “may exceed” a life of 50 years; the certificate for CD-R states “may exceed” 30 years. In environmental tests based on the Arhennius double-stress rule, well recorded DVD+R discs are estimated to last an average of 52 years with a 95% assurance that they would last 39.8 years. The same tests applied to phthalocyanine based CD-R media indicate an average life of 138 years with a 95% assurance that they would reach 125.5 years. Cyanine or azo-cyanine dyes do not reach the same life span, and Taiyo Yuden’s CD-R certificate implies that they realize that. The TY discs are excellent discs, but the laws of chemistry are harsh. Phthalocyanine dye is simply more stable than cyanine or azo-cyanine dyes under conditions of both heat and light. (The NIST environmental tests as well as the OSTA/ECMA test specifications are based on these same test criteria. The claims for gold discs are based on old test data that are not nearly as severe.)

5) The wobble grooves are molded into the discs. Neither the groove nor the modulated high frequency change signal are modified during recording. The wobble acts as a guide for the laser during recording, and the modulation provides an address system for the DVD+R/+RW format as an additional feature. As I mentioned before, this is of little use for DVD+R; but it is essential for DVD+RW and is one of the reasons why these media can be erased and formatted faster than DVD-RW (which is merely a rewritable sequential video format that can awkwardly be pressed into use for recording> data–but only in incremental recordings.)

6) The field codes for both DVD+R and DVD-R contain nearly the same information. In the early days of expensive recording drives, the field codes provided information about both formats the drives would use to set power levels and pulse rates. The low prices today, however, have forced manufacturers to use fixed lookup tables that correspond to the MID codes of discs. The problem here is that media with MID codes introduced after the release of the drive generally behave poorly unless the new MID codes are added to the drive’s memory tables by means of firmware updates. These updates add the proper write strategy and instructions to the drive so that the new discs can be properly recorded. If the new MID codes are not added, the default settings are likely to produce poor recordings and undeserved claims of “poor quality” attributed to the discs. That is why customers must keep updating their drive firmware in order to have some assurance that a variety of discs will work on their recording drives.

7) Rewritable media are unaffected by light. Only high levels of heat can alter the information on the discs. Their poor reputation for stability is due more to: 1) conflicts in packet-writing software; 2) varying laser focus patterns; 3) lack of firmware support; and 4) contaminants in the evaporated layers due to imperfections in the vacuum chambers–in that order. A well made rewritable disc may possibly outlast an organic, dye-based disc. This is particularly true of MOD discs and DVD-RAM discs with their dielectric layers that act as thermal blankets and protective layers.

8) CMC makes the vast majority of Verbatim discs. The exceptions are the DL discs made in Singapore, some discs made in Japan by Taiyo Yuden, and the combination of discs made in New Delhi by MBI. CMC uses Verbatim stampers in their Lin Kuo factories, and that is why the MID codes are MCC or MKK.

9) No manufacturer of magnetic tape ever intentionally made tape that “went fuzzy.” There are a number of reasons why magnetic tape may go bad, but those reasons are not intentional:
A) Basic ferric tape with a good binder system can last for decades. The studio tapes manufactured by Agfa, BASF, and 3M in the 1950s (and many from the 1940s) are in excellent condition if they have been stored properly in cool, dry areas with little temperature fluctuation and even tensions in the tape pack. The notorious binder breakdown problems are relegated to Ampex and Agfa tapes using a particular hydrolytic binder used from the late 1960s to late 1980s. BASF and 3M tapes did not use this binder chemistry, and their production did not suffer from binder breakdown problems.
B) Cobalt-enhanced ferric tapes can suffer from both magnetostrictive effects (loss of high frequencies due to the pressure from the capstan and pinch roller) and from delta noise (an increase in bias noise over time). Both of these effects can induce “fuzziness,” but the bigger cause would more likely be mechanical azimuth errors due to poor cassette housing construction or misaligned players (playback heads/roller guides), to physical tape damage, or to dirty playback heads. The more stable cobalt-enhanced tapes were less likely to suffer from magnetostriction, but the worst were fairly bad and prone to print-through as well.
C) Chromium dioxide tapes did not suffer from magnetostriction, but they did lose a decibel of output across the frequency range in as little as a year. Noise decreased by the same amount, so the signal-to-noise ratio remained the same. However, the Dolby tracking would be off if the tape were encoded with Dolby B noise reduction. This would not create a fuzziness; the mistraking effect was more a boost in treble and a dip in the mid-range response.
D) Metal particle tapes are generally fairly stable but the noisiest of all tapes due to the difficulty in orienting the magnetic pigment during the coating process and controlling size distributions of the particles. The original magnetic tapes from 1934-1936 were iron carbonyl and today sound better than they did when recorded over 70 years ago due to better head construction and better electronics. The acetate backing material, however, is extremely fragile and prone to breakage. The biggest problem of pre-recorded cassette tape was azimuth mismatches. The music industry did settle on an azimuth standards, but that was no guarantee that the users’ playback machines were in proper alignment or properly clean.

1) CD-R production was fairly stable as early as 1996. Kodak’s media were> (Media are always plural. A single disc is a medium.) quite stable, and> recorded 4X samples from 1995 that I have tested show performance values as> good as the best of today’s production. It was the drives and their optical> pickups that improved significantly in 2000, not the discs. (Of course,> there were examples of poor disc production then as there still are today.)>> 2) DVD-R is designed as a sequential video recording format. The DVD Forum> reserved data recording for DVD-RAM. DVD+RW was initially intended as a> rewritable only disc that could handle both data and video. (The logo> remains “DVD+RW” despite the fact that the market demanded an organic> dye-based version almost immediately; and that logo remains a source of> confusion for customers.) That is why the high frequency modulated wobble> is so important–it was intended as a guide for the initial recording as> well as rewrites and erasure. The wobble and the in-line pre-pits of the> DVD-R format are intended only as the initial laser tracking guide. Once a> disc is recorded, the data provide the tracking information. There is no> significant quality difference between the two although the DVD-R is more> difficult to make because of the double-laser required in making masters> with pre-pit information and the required initialization of each disc.>> 3) Gold is ideal as a mirror layer for CD-R because the original> specifications were designed for it. It is not ideal for DVD+/-R because it> is less reflective than silver alloy and because the 435-450 nm wavelength> of the DVD laser is not as effective on the gold surface. Gold DVD+/-R> media are very stable, but they have higher initial error rates than discs> based on silver alloys as reflective layers.>> 4) The Taiyo Yuden life certificate states that their media “may exceed” a> life of 50 years; the certificate for CD-R states “may exceed” 30 years. In> environmental tests based on the Arhennius double-stress rule, well recorded> DVD+R discs are estimated to last 52 years with a 95% assurance that they> would last 39.8 years. The same tests applied to phthalocyanine based CD-R> media indicate an average life of 138 years with a 95% assurance that they> would reach 125.5 years. Cyanine or azo-cyanine dyes do not reach the same> life span, and Taiyo Yuden’s certificates imply that they realize that. The> TY discs are excellent discs, but the laws of chemistry are harsh.> Phthalocyanine dye is simply more stable under conditions of both heat and> light. (The NIST environmental tests as well as the OSTA/ECMA test> specifications are based on these same test criteria. The claims for gold> discs are based on old test data that are not nearly as severe.)>> 5) The wobble grooves are molded into the discs. Neither the groove nor> the modulated high frequency change signal are modified during recording.> The wobble acts as a guide for the laser during recording, and the> modulation provides an address system for the DVD+R/+RW format as an> additional feature. As I mentioned before, this is of little use for DVD+R;> but it is essential for DVD+RW and is one of the reasons why these media can> be erased and formatted faster than DVD-RW (which is merely a rewritable> sequential video format that can awkwardly be pressed into use for recording> data–but only incrementally.)>> 6) The field codes for both DVD+R and DVD-R contain nearly the same> information. In the early days of expensive recording drives, the field> codes provided information about both formats the drives would use to set> power levels and pulse rates. The low prices today, however, have forced> manufacturers to use fixed lookup tables that correspond to the MID codes of> discs. The problem here is that media with codes introduced after the> release of the drive require firmware updates to the memory tables so that> their codes and instructions can be added to the drive. If not, the default> settings are likely to produce poor recordings and undeserved claims of> “poor quality.” That is why customers must keep updating their drive> firmware in order to have some assurance that a variety of discs will work> on their recording drives.>> 7) Rewritable media are unaffected by light. Only high levels of heat can> alter the information on the discs. Their poor reputation for stability is> due more to: 1) conflicts in packet-writing software; 2) varying laser focus> patterns; 3) lack of firmware support; and 4) contaminants in the evaporated> layers due to imperfections in the vacuum chambers–in that order. A well> made rewritable disc may possible outlast an organic, dye-based disc. This> is particularly true of MOD discs and DVD-RAM discs with their dielectric> layers that act as thermal blankets and protective layers.>> 8) CMC makes the vast majority of Verbatim discs. The exceptions are the> DL discs made in Singapore, some discs made in Japan by Taiyo Yuden, and the> combination of discs made in New Delhi by MBI. CMC uses Verbatim stampers> in their Lin Kuo factories, and that is why the MID codes are MCC or MKK.>> 9) No manufacturer of magnetic tape ever intentionally make tape that “went> fuzzy.” There are a number of reasons why magnetic tape may go bad, but> those reasons are not intentional:>> A) Basic ferric tape with a good binder system can last for decades. The> studio tapes manufactured by Agfa, BASF, and 3M in the 1950s (and many from> the 1940s) are in excellent condition if they have been stored properly in> cool, dry areas with little temperature fluctuation and even tensions in the> tape pack. The notorious binder breakdown problems are relegated to Ampex> and Agfa tapes using a particular hydrolytic binder used from the late 1960s> to late 1980s. BASF and 3M tapes did not use this binder chemistry, and> their production did not suffer from binder breakdown problems.>> B) Cobalt-enhanced ferric tapes can suffer from both magnetostrictive> effects (loss of high frequencies due to the pressure from the capstan and> pinch roller) and from delta noise (an increase in bias noise over time).> Both of these effects can induce “fuzziness,” but the bigger cause would> likely be mechanical azimuth errors due to poor cassette housing> construction or misaligned players (playback heads/roller guides), to> physical tape damage, or to dirty playback heads. The more stable> cobalt-enhanced tapes were less likely to suffer from magnetostriction, but> the worst were fairly bad and prone to print-through as well.>> C) Chromium dioxide tapes did not suffer from magnetostriction, but they> did lose a decibel of output across the frequency range in as little as a> year. Noise decreased by the same amount, so the signal-to-noise ratio> remained the same. However, the Dolby tracking would be off if the tape> were encoded with Dolby B noise reduction. This would not create a> fuzziness; the effect was more a boost in treble.>> D) Metal particle tapes are generally fairly stable but the noisiest of all> tapes due to the difficulty in orienting them during the coating process and> controlling size distributions of the particles. The original magnetic> tapes from 1934-1936 were iron carbonyl and today sound better than they did> when recorded over 70 years ago due to better head construction and better> electronics. The acetate backing material, however, is extremely fragile> and prone to breakage.>> The biggest problem of pre-recorded cassette tape was azimuth mismatches.> The music industry did settle on an azimuth standards, but that was no> guarantee that the users’ playback machines were in proper alignment or> properly clean.

Aljosa Majdic: It,s on blank media I have checked all the time so that it could not be.

Terence O’Kelly: I have checked on many DVD’s with different brands.
They all look the same.
DVD-R have the ring and it allways appears the same when it comes to thickness and colour.
None of my many DVD+R with diffrent brands have the ring.
I think it must have to do with the specification of DVD-R.

The ring is the mark of the mask used in the metallizer chamber to deposit the silver alloy. It is more obvious on some discs than others, and I have found it also appears on some DVD+R discs that have a different mask design. After the dye is spin-coated onto the polycarbonate, the edge of the disc is cleaned before it goes into the vacuum chamber. These rings vary depending on the production equipment being used.

I think you’ve missunderstood me.
If you take a close look under a lamp, just at the end of the writeable media area at the center about 3mm before the media ends you see a very thin dark circe. I get the impression that there is an extra space for some information just at the end of the writeable media and that this circle is the border against this area. The DVD+R does not have this thin dark circle.

I have a question based on curiosity.
If you have a blank DVD-R media you can see a thin dark circle near the centrum hole at the end of the burnable media.
Like if the media is devided and there is a little special space there for something.
DVD+R have not this circle.
What is this?

No, other way around. DVD+Rs are almost exactly like pressed DVD; this is why standalone DVD players that refuse to play DVD+Rs play them if you use the booktype hack (which simply changes a byte at the beginning of the disc).

Also, I have no clue how long a pressed DVD will last: most likely, longer than you. People have original generation pressed CDs (and today’s CDs and DVDs are vastly superior) and they were produced in the late 70s and early 80s; and they still work fine.

Is it true that the specifications for DVD-R are more like a pressed DVD compared to DVD+R.
And a preesed DVD, how long can you expect that to last?
Since it’s not containing any dye that can fade it should last much longer..or?

I don’t think they’re leapfrogging. From what I’ve seen, +R and +RW lags behind -R and -RW about six months.

The technological difference between +R/+RW and -R/-RW is related to how they structure data on the disc as opposed to how the format itself works… both -RW and +RW use the same phase change technology.

Its quite possible the +RW market has grown big enough that -RW took a back seat to newly issued speeds.

It seems like the max speed of DVD+RWs (both media & drives) have historically been a bit further ahead of DVD-RWs for any given time frame. i.e. DVD+RW came out with 2.4x and 4x around the same time that DVD-RW was at 2x, and today DVD+RWs are available at 8x while the max for DVD-RW is only at 6x. Is this perception correct, or are the two formats just leapfrogging each other? If the perception is correct, do any of your technical explanations of why +R is better related to the reason? I could believe the use of the phase change approach and/or multiple sets of laser calibrations could contribute to this, but I wasn’t sure. Thanks…